Cunning real-estate super agent Lucinda Wells knows that location is everything, and she uses her knowledge to control the fate of New York's high society. Embezzlement, forgery, dot-com busts--these are the scandals that pepper the lives of the city's major players who are vying for the best locations. Only Lucinda knows how to expose their weaknesses and play them off against each other.

In Closing Costs, Seth Margolis weaves together three stories in a sizzling tale that captures the devastating and blissful effects--from renovating a classic and dealing with contractors to the agony of giving up a home--of the market's twists and turns.

Only the occasional groan from the man indicated that he was awake and deriving pleasure from the exercise--that, and an impressively durable erection. Whether the woman was deriving any satisfaction was hard to tell, as a glistening mass of ...